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Citizens' Dividend

A Citizen's Dividend (CD, equal share payment to all citizes out of collected rent) is crucial strategically for rent collection. There are several other reasons for CD.
1) CD provides a share of the common wealth to everyone.
2) CD reduces poverty directly, government programs may not
3) CD eliminates all the humiliating stigmas of means tested welfare programs.
4) CD counteracts the inevitable increase in unemployment due to technology, globalization, outsourcing, downsizing, automation, etc.
5) CD might overcome the resistance of homeowners to land taxes, since they are ALREADY collecting 5-10% per year of their property values in retention of rent. -- Gary Flomenhoff

Alaska has consistently voted against losing their oil dividend (Alaska Permanent Fund) which woul be even higher if it included land rent. When Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime minister of the 1980s introduced privatisation many middle class people were quick to buy shares in public utilities and sell them in order to make a one-off few hundred quid. If these publicly owned companies (gas, electricity, water, British Airways, airports, BP, railways, buses, steel, coal etc.) had paid a dividend to each citizen then there would have been a public outcry against privatisation from a public loath to lose their dividend. Similarly if we link a proportion of the collection of land rent to a land dividend, surely voters would reject out of hand any proposal to give the land rent back to the Duke of Westminster and his ilk? -- Fred Harrison